Free Republic

Laguna Beach's LSD culture in the 1960s, a cranky widower befriended by his chatty neighbors and a man who's dealing with the fallout from his reality show days are all stories that will be told at the Newport Beach Film Festival this year. At this, the 17th annual festival, there are more than 400 features, short films and documentaries from 50 different countries. It's a chance to see things that likely won't appear elsewhere, especially in the United States. The festival starts this Thursday and runs until the following Thursday. "The largest misconception about any film festival is that these...

It has been years since audiences have been given a horror movie that wasn't a carbon copy of another film—big-budget film producers aren't exactly flowing with ideas. Thankfully, the Horror Showcase at the Newport Beach Film Festival, running April 23-30, aims to counter that fatigue with a new crop of filmmakers outside of the Hollywood milieu, presenting seven short films and one feature film that not only break the mold of clichés, but also eat their brains . . . or something. Because if there's one thing we can be mindful of, it's that some of the best, most memorable...

1. Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915. 2. As a filmmaker, his three greatest pictures, in order, are Touch of Evil (1958), Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). 3. Ah, yes, but Citizen Kane tops many lists as the greatest film of all time (with Welles filling the top slot on many directing lists). The fictional story of a megalomaniac newspaper magnate (loosely based on William Randolph Hearst) and innocence lost is indeed a masterpiece . . . albeit a dated one. Newspaper magnates? Not in this century, bub. 4. John Houseman wrote in his 1972...